


Choosing Closets

by TeekiJane



Series: 1000 Words [5]
Category: Baby-Sitters Club - Ann M. Martin
Genre: Other, Sexuality Crisis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:22:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24830782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeekiJane/pseuds/TeekiJane
Summary: Abby's not sure where she fits in.
Series: 1000 Words [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/820050
Comments: 3
Kudos: 17





	Choosing Closets

1\. Whisper

Kristy Thomas’s sixteenth birthday party was exactly what I expected it to be: a weekend of regimented fun. “Did u leave us any time to go too the bathroom?” Claudia cracked when she saw that Kristy had included a timetable of events in her email party invitation. The rest of us responded in kind, but it was all in good fun. No one had expected any less out of her. 

Somewhere in between sunning ourselves on the beach at Shadow Lake (ten to noon on Saturday) and lunch at the lodge (twelve-thirty to one), the topic of boys came up for the first time. “Hey, hey now,” Stacey quipped, raising her voice above our general din, “Save that talk for later. I think Kristy’s put it on the schedule for eleven-fifteen tonight, just before we brush our teeth.” 

That didn’t stop us, of course, but we did wait until we were back at the cabin to really get down to business. Claudia liked to date around and was currently juggling three guys at once. Mary Anne played coy about whether she’d stayed in touch with a French exchange student who’d spent the past year attached to her hip. 

Kristy herself didn’t have much to say, but she did spend a lot of time asking questions. “Hey, I’m a late bloomer,” she replied when probed. “I’m coming into my own. I need to live vicariously through you until I find a guy who—” She grabbed a romance novel off Mary Anne’s bed and began reading from a random spot in the middle. “A guy who makes me quiver deep down in my loins.”

Mary Anne threw a pillow at her, naturally starting an old-fashioned pillow fight (which was definitely _not_ on Kristy’s schedule.) I joined in the squealing and flinging and tickling, grateful that boy talk had ended before anyone noticed that I hadn’t said a word. 

I wasn’t in the mood for Kristy to add me to her ‘late bloomer’ category. I honestly wasn’t sure that was the problem. I felt the exact same way about boys at fifteen as I had at thirteen, or at eight. They were about as sexually appealing as a textbook or a trombone. I got more of a release from looking at my cleats and a soccer ball than I did seeing a half-naked guy. 

Later that night, long after Claudia and Stacey had fallen asleep, I awoke to a quiet whisper from the two other occupied lower bunks. “Apparently, everyone in California knows,” Mary Anne said. She was nose to nose with Kristy, the two of them peering over the headboards between their beds. “She’s only keeping it quiet here because she doesn’t want it to get back to my dad.” 

“Your dad’s not that bad,” Kristy replied, her voice muffled. 

“That’s what I told her,” Mary Anne said. “But I think she’s just not ready to be ‘out’ yet here. She’s got that silly idea that California is so much more progressive than Connecticut.” 

“There are plenty of gay people in Stoneybrook,” Kristy said, her pitch and volume both rising. She always gets indignant when someone insults our Podunk hometown. 

Claudia snored just then, and the two of them jumped back from each other and lowered their heads. Soon, their breathing turned rhythmic, and I was the only one awake. I lay there, as silent as I had been earlier. Anyone who knows me knows that quiet is not my nature, but I had finally found a topic for which I had no words. 

2\. Labels 

Claudia surprised a few people when she decided to take a girl to senior prom. 

I’m sure there was a little bit of homophobia from some corners of town, but mostly, it was confusion. “You were just on a date with a boy last night,” Kristy, ever the one to get straight to the point, said in a group chat when the news became known. 

“yeah so?” 

“So…” The little ‘typing’ … appeared and disappeared several times while Kristy carefully considered her words, something she rarely does when speaking. “So, what are you?” 

Stacey posted half a dozen laughing faces. “She’s a human being, Kristy,” she added, then a few more faces. “God, what a question.” 

Kristy ignored this. “Do you still like boys?” she pressed on. 

“yup.” 

“So…” There was less of a pause this time. “Are you bi?” 

“Does it matter?” Mary Anne said, echoing my exact thoughts. 

“mabe im bi,” Claudia said. “or mabe I’m pan. whutever. i dont like lables.” 

Kristy came over to my house that weekend to discuss prom plans. Mary Anne and Stacey both had boyfriends, and obviously Claudia had her date all lined up. Kristy had her eyes on the captain of the debate team and was debating whether she should just ask him out herself, instead of waiting for him to ask her. She had borrowed a stack of prom magazines from Stacey and was idly flipping through a section on hair styles while I lay on my back, working some muscles through a series of yoga and tai chi moves. “Who are you going to prom with?” she asked me after half an hour of agonizing over her own date. 

I sat up and stared at her with wide, wild eyes. Lounging on the bed, looking at hair magazines and talking about boys? We had never been so typically … girly … before. It gave me the sudden urge to run out the door and kick a soccer ball as hard as I could. “I hadn’t thought about it.” 

Kristy looked up from her magazine, watching me carefully. “You only have a week until ticket sales end,” she said. 

“Maybe I won’t go,” I said. 

“Please.” Kristy rolled her eyes. “You know you’re going, especially after what happened last year.”

“That was mildly entertaining,” I had to admit. Alan Gray had gotten caught trying to spike the punch, and had made a spectacle of himself, including ripping down to his skivvies and quoting Monty Python as he was dragged out. 

“Is this because you don’t have a boyfriend?” Kristy asked. “Obviously it’s not a problem. I’m sure there’s some guy we can set you up with.” 

I shrugged, biting my lower lip. “I’d rather not.” 

Kristy propped herself further on her elbows. She licked her lip for a moment and mulled her options. In the end, she went for it. “Or maybe you’d rather we found you a girl.” 

It’s not that I had never had the thought before. If I’m not terribly interested in boys—and the thought of slow dancing with one didn’t sound the slightest bit appealing—I must be into girls, right? I pictured Claudia and Carly at the prom together and replaced one of their heads with my own. Nothing. “I don’t think so,” I murmured. Maybe I just wasn’t interested in either of those two. 

Now Kristy sat up entirely, a vague pitying look washing across her face. “You can always go to prom by yourself again,” she said, and I could see lights in her eyes that told me her brain was churning. It could only have been more obvious that she was scheming something if she’d started rubbing her hands together or twirling her evil-villain mustache and cackling. 

“Maybe I just don’t like labels,” I said, echoing Claudia’s earlier sentiments, but I knew it wasn’t true. I’d be glad to describe myself, once I figured out what I was. 

3\. Pride 

I stay in touch with my high school friends in different ways, although most of those friendships fade as the years go by. For a while after we scatter to five different states for five different colleges, Kristy, Claudia, Mary Anne, Stacey and I text daily, sometimes throughout the whole day and night. We hear when virginities are lost and when friends are threatening to drop out of school—some serious, some not. Somewhere in the first semester of sophomore year, the texts stop entirely. 

I sign up for a human sexuality class for my health requirement for second semester that year. Initially I choose it because it is the only option that fits into my schedule, but as time goes on, I begin to look forward to it. College is supposed to be a time to learn about new things, right? At nineteen, I have still never been on a date or wanted to. My friends at college just accept this: “That’s Abby for you,” my freshman year roommate says to a guy who asks me out for coffee just before finals. 

Human sexuality turns out to be even more than I expected. We study anatomy and physiological reactions in extreme detail before we get to the social and emotional aspects. There is an entire week of classes about sexual orientation, and that’s when I finally get a complete understanding of Claudia’s potential pansexuality. (“We’re attracted to people, not parts,” a classmate says.) It’s also when I first hear the terms asexual, heteroromantic, and demisexual. 

“I never realized you could define yourself in terms of your romantic preferences and sexual preferences, or that they could be different,” I tell a classmate as we leave the lecture hall. 

“I know,” he says. “I bet most people’s are the same though. Probably, in most cases, whatever you’re interested in dating is what you’re sexually attracted to.” 

“Well, what if you’re not interested in dating anyone, though?” I ask. 

It’s a hypothetical question, and I don’t expect him to answer. “Well, then, you’re aromantic, silly,” he says with a laugh. I can’t figure out whether the _you_ is generic or if he realizes I’ve been talking to myself out loud. 

I repeat the phrase to myself over and over in my head as I walk back to my dorm. By the time my next class rolls around, I’ve researched every website I can find. I don’t eat lunch and I don’t work on any of my (due right now) assignments, but I come to a conclusion. And I feel better about that than I would have about my algebra grade, anyway. 

I dig in my pocket and pull out my cell phone as I hurry out the door with my bag slung over one shoulder and a cookie shoved in my mouth. I scroll through old text messages until I find one called OG Babysitters. The last message is from five months ago, when Stacey responded ‘k’ to some plans she and Claudia made to head back to Stoneybrook for homecoming. 

I pause outside the door to the lecture hall and consider waiting. Maybe I’ll see them over summer break. Or maybe I won’t, and then, will I care if they know or not? In the end, I decide it’s better to come out for the first time to someone you might never see again. “Hey, guys. I just wanted you to know that I’m asexual and aromantic. I don’t mind listening to you all talk about your guys (or girls), but I’m not interested in dating or sex myself.” 

I turn my phone to silent and hurry into class, only a few minutes late. When I get out, I pull my phone out of pocket. Four new messages: 

Claudia: “cool” 

Stacey: “Whatever floats your boat, I always say.” 

Mary Anne: “Let us know if we get annoying with our talk and I promise we’ll cut back.” 

Kristy: “I’ve been meaning to ask you all if you’re coming home this summer. I think it’s time we made another visit to Shadow Lake.” 

I can’t help but smile as I bash out a reply. “I’ll definitely see you then.”

**Author's Note:**

> Fills the Invite, Worry and Answer prompts on table one of Babysitters 100.


End file.
